Back To The Status Quo
by Ms. Kinnikufan
Summary: Mantaro's thought sometime after winning the Chojin Crown


Back To the Status Quo

By Ms. Kinnikufan

Disclaimer: None is mine.

I light my gaudily colored cigarette in a dirty alleyway. It's been a while since I've been able to have a smoke. Meat found my carton of cigarettes under the bed and went all apeshit, going on how chojins shouldn't smoke and blah, blah, blah.

I now have to hide my cigarettes under a loose tile in the locker room. Sometimes they are not always there. I think the janitor steals them.

I take a deep puff. So many things have happen since I had my last cigarette. The Chojin Crown for one thing.

I won the Chojin Crown. It felt great, positively great at the time. I had beaten Kevin Mask, who had insulted my coach Meat. I had proven the power of friendship, yadda, yadda. The grunge between our bloodlines is over now. Oh, whom the hell am I kidding? Our kids will probably form some sort of new grunge.

Now that I think of it, it wasn't like Kevin didn't know anything about friendship. He obviously cared about his coach. (Some tabloids argue a little too much.) He did cry over him, after all.

It's been three weeks since the end of the Chojin Crown. It feels like its back to the status quo. Rinko and Jacqueline still don't want to kiss me or even give me a friendly handshake. People still think of me as an idiot and make fun of me behind my back.

Sure I continued a proud legacy of Kinniku wins blah, blah, but sometimes I feel like I was predestined to win. That's not actually a good feeling when you think about it. It feels like I'm the character of a cartoon and I've to win, no matter what my competence level is. Sometimes I feel like Kevin was the one who was supposed to win, but someone made a change at the last minute.

Jacqueline is the temporary chairman now. Apparently Ikeman had a nervous breakdown and is now having a 'rest' in a sanitarium. Apparently he got into an argument with his father shortly after my victory party. I wasn't there, but I heard it involved Ikeman feeling like his father never showed him one shred of affection, his mother's incredibly graphic suicide and some sort of body image problems he has had since puberty.

None's seen Kevin Mask. Rumor has it that he has gone that slippery slope of booze and pills.

So where does this leave me now? Back to the good ol' goddammed status quo. The status quo of training and waiting for the next menace to show up and beating up the menace.

I feel like the only one who doesn't have an identity outside of the ring. Sieuchin's a midwife, Gazelleman has a side career as a model, Terryglues things together and tries to convince people that it's art, Checkmate haschess.

I mention to Meat that I once hoped to get a degree in computer technology, but he just held his in laughter and told me to stick to my day job.

I'm not entirely stupid. Its not like I think computers run on magic. That's a start, isn't it?

I'm starting to feel trapped by the Kinniku legacy. I'm supposed to be the next king and that scares the shit out of me. I don't think I'll be a good leader. I'm afraid that an advisor will manipulate me.

I'm happy here on Earth. It so much more colorful here and there is so many things to do and see. Plus Earth people come in all sorts of different colors, instead of the same peachy sort of beige all Kinniku people are. Plus their expressions are unhampered by masks; you can really tell what they're feeling.

I want to break out of the status quo, but I don't know how. My fate seems so predestined. I want to be something other then just a continuation of the damn Kinniku legacy. I want my kids to feel like they're worth is more then just as continuation of the Kinniku legacy.

You know, I've just realize something: people of legacies don't seem to be happy. Kevin wasn't happy about his training to be a part of the Mask legacy, Robin is sad that his son isn't communicating anymore, not even though prank phone calls, my uncle Ataru run away because he couldn't take it.

Should I take uncle Ataru's route? Disguised myself, runaway and never come back? I can't bring myself to do that. I love my parents and I care about my friends. I just can't cut off contact with them.

I guess the only way is through some unseen force, some event that may or may not come. I know that sounds weak-willed, and it probably is.

But when you feel your fate is not quite your own, is all that you could hope for.

My cigarette burns out. I must head back; my friends are probably wondering where I am. There the one thing I wouldn't change about the status quo I'm end.


End file.
